MOVIES
Seraphine is a dogged worker who doesn't talk much unless she's asked questions. In her off-hours we see her singing in church, transported with love for the Virgin Mary. At night she paints, using clay that she's collected from the river, tallow that she sneaks from the church's votive candles, whatever paint she can afford to buy with her meager savings, and even a bit of chicken blood from her work at the local butcher's, which she uses for the distinctive reds in her work. Her bold paintings of fruit and flowers are laughed at by one of her employers, but a man renting a house that she cleans notices one of the pictures and believes he has discovered a great talent. He is a German art critic and gallery owner named Wilhelm Uhde, and when he tries to encourage Seraphine she has trouble believing he's serious. Excited by her work, he plans to exhibit it in Paris, but the advent of World War I forces him to flee, and he doesn't return until fifteen years later, when he finds that Seraphine's art has in the meantime matured into something astounding.
Yolande Moreau is riveting in the title role of Seraphine. This intensely driven, simple yet obsessive artist is a compelling mixture of pride and vulnerability, and Moreau's physical bearing communicates the character so perfectly that we get to know her intimately even with few words said. The art critic Uhde (Ulrich Tuker), who lives with his sister and a male lover, is compassionate but reserved. It's part of the film's pathos that his efforts to help Seraphine are hampered by events beyond his control, as well as his own mental distance from her inner world. She is a visionary who paints not from a conscious desire for advancement, but in her mind from a harmony with a guardian angel, and in a mystical communion with nature.
The film was directed by Martin Prevost, who wrote the screenplay with Marc Abdelnour, and it was exquisitely shot by Laurent Brunet in soft palettes and what appears to be natural light, so that the film itself, sensitive to the spatial qualities of landscapes and dwellings, seems like a beautiful painting itself. It's a film of much silence, in which we observe the toiling of the artist as a solitary, sacred, and sometimes disturbing place, erupting from the fingers of Seraphine like a force of nature.
Without ever verbalizing the questions, we are led to ask, What is this creative force that comes through us? How do we still manage to live our daily lives in the midst of it? And can the dream of recognition and fulfillment tear us from the roots that nourish our art? Seraphine is a beautiful and moving testament to the wildness of the creative spirit.
© Copyright 2012, KXCI
